International 'John Carter' Featurette: Talking Heads, Big Effects

There's a new minute-and-a-half international featurette for John Carter that combines new footage, stuff we've already seen, and several creative figures from the film talking it up. Amidst the requisite claims that the movie will be "so huge" but is also "a character-driven story," co-writer and director Andrew Stanton notes that the source material, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, has inspired countless other properties, "from books to comic books to movies." Shoring up the point, Willem Dafoe points out that without Burroughs' novels, there'd be no Star Wars or Avatar.

An implicit question being posed is whether an audience unfamiliar with the character and the world of Barsoom will take the trip or reject John Carter on account of its seeming familiarity.

The featurette, which is here thanks to the good folks at Coming Soon, can't answer that question, and neither can I, but the more I see, the more hopeful I am that John Carter will figuratively take to the skies like its hopping protagonist.

Willem Dafoe playing a nine-foot tall alien with extra limbs seems perfectly natural, and his Tars Tarkas looks like he'll be a lot of fun. Taylor Kitsch, who so effectively played the dreamy misanthrope on the late, great Friday Night Lights, stars as Carter, a Civil War veteran inexplicably transported to the surface of Mars. Lynn Collins, who appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine with Kitsch, plays Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Burroughs' original title. The rest of the cast includes Dominic West, Polly Walker, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, and Samantha Morton.

Get your Rogue 3D Eyewear promptly in order to see John Carter stylishly in 3D or IMAX 3D on March 9th.